


Tea

by aggiepuff, Whedonista93



Series: Zutara Week 2018 [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Prompt Fic, Tea, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 20:12:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15517692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggiepuff/pseuds/aggiepuff, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedonista93/pseuds/Whedonista93
Summary: In which Zuko is half in love with the scowling blue-eyed girl with a preference for Jasmine tea before he even learns her name.





	Tea

“You, again?!” Zuko all but snarls, even as he’s already setting about brewing the blue-eyed girl’s preferred jasmine blend.

“Despite the fact that the service is _atrocious_ ,” she snaps back, “it’s the only shop near campus I can afford.”

It’s an old exchange - one they’ve been having for the past three months (of the four she’s been coming to the Jasmine Dragon) - and one that's more posturing, on both their parts, than actual ire.

She pays, cash as always, and finds a seat by the window. Zuko finishes preparing her tea and plates one of the turkey wraps from the cooler before taking both to her table.

She stares at the plate blankly for several seconds before giving him a Look. “I didn’t order that.”

“I know.”

She continues to look at him expectantly.

He sighs. “I’ve seen you in the library 3 days this week at lunch and you’ve been _here_ from late afternoon to well past dinner every night. Midterms is not the time to stop eating. As a medical student, you should know that.”

She looks like she’s about to protest but her expression catches at the last moment. “How did you know I was a medical student?”

Zuko looks pointedly at the anatomy and biochemistry textbooks open on the table.

Her cheeks flush. “Right. Uh, thank you.” She reaches for her wallet. “I’ll pa-hey!”

Zuko walks away, leaving her floundering.

She’s still glaring at him when he makes it back behind the counter.

He smirks until she huffs and turns back to her work.

 

* * *

  


Over the years, he learns things about her. The second semester of her first year, she finally tells him that her name is Katara.

She starts dragging her friends to the shop. Her older brother, Sokka, a dual athletics and elementary education major whose honest-to-Agni goal in life it to be a kids’ coach - he doesn’t seem to care what sport. Sokka’s girlfriend Suki, who forewent college and teaches at a local dojo. Toph, a mouthy blind girl who is studying, of all things, archaeology. And Aang, some kind of teenage prodigy-type law student with dreams of the Peace Corp.

Iroh adores the whole lot of them, and guilt trips Zuko into accepting their friendship. Before her second year is even halfway over, Katara is working in the shop alongside Zuko every day.

He begrudgingly enjoys working with her, except for the brief stint during her third year when she starts dating some tool named Jet. Toph bluntly reminds him of Katara's similar grumpiness when he had briefly resumed his relationship with his highschool girlfriend the summer between Katara’s first and second years. He doesn't know why, but something about that makes him feel better; Iroh laughs until he cries when Zuko shares the thought with his uncle.

She never goes home, because she can’t afford it, and refuses to let Iroh pay for it even once, despite his offers, and by the end of her third year, Zuko can admit, if only to himself, that he's more than a little in love with her. So, of course, that's when the trouble starts.

 

* * *

  


Summer is coming to an end when Zuko finds Katara scowling at the Classifieds after the shop closes one night.

Zuko sets a teacup in front of her before dripping into the chair across from her. “Leaving us already?”

“Thanks,” Katara gestures to her teacup. “Uh, no. I have to find an apartment."

Zuko’s brow furrows. “You're going into your fourth year, can't you still stay in the dorms?”

Katara gives him one of her Looks. “Zuko, I finished my last Masters courses over the summer.”

“How?”

She shrugs. “I did dual enrollment in high school, so I already had my Associates when I moved to Ba Sing Se. And then I took all those summer classes since I couldn't go home. All I have left is my doctoral dissertation and my residency.”

“Wow. I mean, I know you've worked yourself to the bone, but I guess I didn't realize how much you'd gotten done. Where have you been staying all summer?”

Katara grimaces. “Sokka and Suki’s couch.”

Zuko winces.

“ _Yeeeeah_ ,” Katara drawls. She gestures to the paper. “Hence the apartment hunting. I just can't find anything I can afford in a neighborhood where I won't have to worry about getting mugged or robbed every night.”

“You could stay with us,” Zuko offers.

Katara looks up sharply.

“I mean, we have a spare room, and you spend most of your time here anyway. Just going upstairs instead of trekking across town would save time. And renting one room instead of a whole apartment would save money.”

Katara bites her lip. “I don't know.”

“Uncle snores like none other, but other than that, we're pretty easy to live with.”

Katara waves that off. “Sokka snores. I'm used to it. Shouldn't you check with Iroh?”

It's Zuko’s turn to give Katara a Look.

She laughs. “Yeah, okay, weak argument.” She glances at the paper and flinches before looking back up at Zuko. “That would be great. Thank you.”

A week later, she's all moved into their spare room when he finds her sitting cross-legged at their coffee table, scowling at blank document on her laptop.

He drops onto the couch behind her. “What is it with you and scowling at inanimate objects lately?”

Katara throws an embarrassed grin over her shoulder. “Dissertation.”

“Don't know what to write it on?”

“No, I have a topic, I just don't know where to start."

“What's your topic?”

“Simplified version? Why holistic medicine should be the first line of defense in health and how big pharm companies are destroying the healthcare industry.”

Zuko's not sure what it is in her voice that makes him ask, already knowing he's going to regret it, but he asks anyway. “What's your issue with big pharm companies?”

Katara mutters something incomprehensible before vanishing into her room, laptop in tow. Zuko decides it'll be easier to ask Sokka than try to talk to Katara in a Mood and treks back downstairs where Sokka is still talking to one of Iroh’s old friends, who was apparently one of Sokka’s high school football coaches.

Sokka jerks his chin in greeting. “‘Sup?”

Zuko waves him off. “I don't want to interrupt. I can wait.”

Sokka shakes his head. “We were just finishing up.” He turns back to the older man. “It was good to see you, sir. Thank you for the tips.”

They shake hands and Sokka relocks the door behind him before joining Zuko at a table toward the back.

Zuko stares at the table for a full minute before looking up at Sokka. “Your sister’s dissertation.”

Sokka winces. “Oh.”

“I get the feeling her issue with big pharm companies is personal?”

Sokka nods. “Our mom was killed by a trial drug that Phoenix International knew wasn't ready for human testing.”

Zuko goes very still. “Phoenix?”

“I told her you'd find out eventually. She didn't want to tell you because she was worried about you.”

“Me? Why would sh-” understanding dawns on his face and his hand finds his scar. “You guys know who I am.”

Sokka shrugs. “It was a pretty public investigation.”

Zuko gulps. “You guys should hate me.”

Sokka shakes his head. “ _That's_ exactly why she didn't want you to know about any of it. She didn't want you to beat yourself up over something that had nothing to do with you.”

“But it's my fath-"

“Your father's company, yeah, but not yours. You were just a kid. None of it was your fault, and she didn't want you blaming yourself for it. From the little Iroh has told us, it sounds like you lost as much as we did.”

“Oh. I didn't realize you… he…” He frowns at his hands. Finally, “Why would she care, though?”

Sokka rolls his eyes. “For a smart guy, you can be kinda a dumbass, Zuko.”

“Huh?”

“Hmm… now why would a girl want to spare a guys feelings?”

“We’re friends,” he says quickly. “She’s a good friend. She doesn’t like hurting Aang either.”

Sokka nods. “True, but she tells him the hurtful things anyways, she just does it gently. What does it say when a girl doesn’t want to hurt a guy’s feelings _at all_? When she wants to protect him?”

It takes Zuko longer than he'd like to admit to get the hint. “Oh. I, uh, I should-"

“Go talk to my sister?” Sokka smirks. “Yeah, you should.”

Zuko turns toward the stairs then stops and doubles back behind the counter. He takes the time to brew a pot of jasmine tea and plates two turkey wraps before making his way up the stairs and tapping lightly on her door.

She opens it slowly, blue eyes wary.

“I talked to Sokka,” he offers. Then he lifts the tray. “I come bearing gifts.”

Her expression softens, and she steps aside to let him in.

He kisses her for the first time that night. He tells her he loves her a week later. Winter break, he surprises her with an early present and flies himself, Katara, Sokka, and Suki home to their little village for the holidays. Hakoda doesn't even bat an eye when Zuko asks for his blessing to marry Katara - apparently Katara and Sokka had both spoken of him often and well. They get married in the tea shop during Spring break.

By the dawn of the next year, Katara has completed her dissertation and residency and holds a position in Ba Sing Se’s most prestigious hospital. Two months later she quits and, with Zuko finally putting his business degree to use, opens a clinic next door to The Jasmine Dragon.

By the time their first child is born a few years later, Phoenix International is literally in flames after one too many volatile chemical experiments. Zuko laughs until he cries when a lawyer shows up at their door with the paperwork for his family's estate, and the insurance settlement from Phoenix burning, with the news that his father had forged the documents naming him CEO, and proving that Zuko was the majority shareholder, a final gift from his long-dead mother.

His father writes him a very angry letter when they turn Phoenix into a holistic medicine company a year later.

His life is wonderful, he thinks, watching his daughter and wife baking cookies. All because a pretty blue-eyed girl came to his uncle’s tea shop and glared when he dared interrupt her studying with a freshly brewed pot of Jasmine tea.


End file.
